Monday, April 9, 2012

Sporting News rips Urban Meyer

Character issues ... were fueled by a culture Meyer created. Character issues that gutted what was four years earlier the most powerful program in college football.

It was Meyer who declared the Florida program “broken” at the end of his last regular season game in Gainesville in November of 2010. But why was it broken?

“Over the last two years he was there,” one former player said, “the players had taken complete control of the team.”

Only now, through interviews with multiple sources during a three-month Sporting News investigation, do we see just how damaged the infrastructure really was and how much repair work second-year coach Will Muschamp has had to undertake in replacing Meyer—who has moved on to Ohio State less than a year after resigning from Florida for health reasons.

To casual observers, Hayes' expose' and torching of Meyer's tenure at Florida comes as a shock. But for those of us who watched the arrests pile up while the quality of play declined, the story is confirmation of what so many suspected.

Coaches who lose disciplinary control over their program never quite get their feet back underneath them. We saw a lot of the same foolishness in Tuscaloosa between 2003 and 2007.

The only difference between Mike Shula and Urban Meyer was that Urban Meyer signed Tim Tebow.